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Thursday, January 11, 2018

Happy New Year and an SFR trope

Pete and I decided to spend Christmas on Norfolk Island, a
remote volcanic peak in the South Pacific between Noumea and New Zealand. The island
is a fascinating place full of history and I've written a series of posts abut
it on my own website. (You'll find them here) I'm a writer. History excites me.
But I can't see myself writing another historical fiction novel in the near
future.

Then again…

One of the most popular tropes in SFR is 'aliens need Earth
women'. I don't write it, I don't read it – but on our recent visit to Norfolk
Island I had to admit that the concept might be actually plausible. After all,
most of what we write/read in SFR probably has its counterpart here on planet
Earth.

Come with me to the European beginnings of that wonderful
country I call home – Australia. In the 1780's Britain had a growing problem
with convicts. As a result of its harsh penal system, and the even harsher
conditions for the less well-off, who resorted to theft to survive, the jails
were overflowing. Some prisoners were kept in the hulks of sailing ships that
were past their use-by dates. The gentry wanted the riff-raff out of England. After
the American war of independence ended in 1783 the Americans wouldn't accept
any more English convicts.

What to do?

Answer: ship them off to the other side of the world. What
about the Great South Land, mapped by Captain Cook in his great voyage of
exploration in 1770? So it was decided. Eleven ships set sail from Portsmouth
carrying around 1500 convicts, settlers, and marines. They settled on the
shores of Port Jackson at a place they called Sydney Cove. Here's a potted history.

It wasn't an easy life. Europeans at that time didn't really
understand that things were not going to be the same as at home. The seasons
were different, the climate was different, crops failed, starvation loomed,
illness threatened. And to top it all off, most of the settlers were men. Some
women were transported on the First Fleet, but not enough to form a stable
society. So the powers-that-be in England emptied the jails of women –
especially those sentenced to death – and sent them off to the fledgling colony
on the Lady Juliana as part of a
second fleet. The ladies were lucky – unlike the crews of the other ships in
the second fleet, the captain of the Lady
Juliana was a reasonable man who looked after his passengers. To be sure,
the 'ladies' were happy to look after the needs of the captain and his crew,
and any gentlemen they might encounter when they were in port. Only one woman
died on the journey to Australia, in stark contrast to the many men who died on
the other ships.

One of the females on the Lady Juliana was 11-year-old Mary Wade, sentenced to death for
highway robbery (stealing another child's clothes). After a good deal of
adversity, Mary went on to be the mother of 21 children, one of Australia's
founding mothers.

Here's another story to whet your appetite – the mutiny on
the Bounty. Forget about the mutiny
itself, let's get to the story of what happened to the mutineers. After he'd
set Captain Bligh and eighteen loyal crew adrift in the Bounty's longboat, Fletcher Christian was left with a few loyal
mutineers and a number of crew who would have gone with Bligh if there'd been
room. Christian knew he'd have to disappear to avoid the noose – the Admiralty
would come looking when the Bounty
didn't show up. The Bounty had spent
five happy months on Tahiti, so Christian eventually returned there to off-load
the dissenters. He left again with eight loyal mutineers, six Polynesian men
(three were stowaways) and twelve Polynesian women. Substitute 'alien' for
Polynesian, and you have your SFR trope. Christian and his motley crew ended up
on Pitcairn Island, safe from being found because Pitcairn's location was wrong
on the Admiralty maps. The history is simply fascinating and you can read some of it here.

As 2018 begins, I'll make one promise to anybody interested
– I'll write a sequel to For the Great Good.
Puss will be going into space again, in the Dryden Universe. It should be fun.

Wishing everybody a wonderful 2018. And here are a few photos from Norfolk Island to widen your eyes.

5 comments:

Pretty fascinating history! I knew how Australia got its start as a nation, but I never knew it was largely due to America refusing convicts. I learned something new! And yes, definitely a lot of muse fuel in those histories! Loved the photos, too.

The convicts things is not the whole story. The English were very anxious to prevent the French, who were nosing about the same area, from getting in first. That factoid had a LOT to do with the settlement of Australia, on the west coast, too.

I can't say I'm a fan of the Mars needs women trope, mostly because it almost always puts women in the position of slavery or coerced (going willingly by their own free choice I can live with). I *DID* read one that did a good job of persuading me that they aren't all bad (one of the shorts in Tales from the SFR Brigade), but it's still not my fave trope, and even true life versions here on Earth don't change my mind. But I do remember a story from original Star Trek - Mudd's Women? - where the women and the men came to a mutually beneficial agreement which kind of soothed my hackles over it. I would love to see some kind of twist on the trope (but not a Venus needs men type thing).

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